It is to my understanding that some Turks would have sexual relationships with boys, mainly slaves I think. Homosexual acts are forbidden in Islam however and I imagine that there would have been a large stigma towards homosexual feelings of any kind. How was this practice accepted?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
When the Japanese planes were launched on Dec . 7,1941 how many miles were the aircraft carriers from Hawaii ? How were they not noticed by any American ships or planes ?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
One of the main storylines of the NBA finals this year is that LeBron can cement himself as the GOAT, or at least make it a debate with Jordan. Was there a consensus GOAT before Jordan, or was this really only an argument that started to develop with the creation of the Internet?
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Forgive me for the slightly morbid question, it's just something I was thinking. I know Hawaii was bombed in Pearl Harbor, although that was before Hawaii became a U.S. state. And of course during 9/11, planes were used as bombs, but that's not the same as a device explicitly designed to explode and kill.
Also discounting things like parcel bombs and IEDs which have been used in terror attacks such as the UNABOMber, the 1993 WTC attack, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing, etc.
Has the mainland United States ever actually had an incendiary device deliberately dropped, from an aircraft, by an enemy of the United States, on any population centres or military base? As a British citizen I'm quite familiar with the concept of incendiary devices being dropped on civilian populations, as London was bombed heavily during the Second World War, and there still exist a few damaged buildings to this day.
I was curious as to whether the US has ever been bombed in this way or if it's somehow managed to escape this.
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I was watching Pride and Prejudice when I noticed that people are doing lots of drinking and the ball is rather long. So where would a person, especially a woman, in a similar ball (huge ball at a big palace-like house, but not an actual palace, in province, Regency era, England) go to pee? What about other balls in literature (Count of Monte Cristo's ball at the suburbs of Paris comes to mind)?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
In this episode of the podcast Writing Excuses, L.E. Modesitt Jr. said the only two successful cities that were placed in the middle a desert were Petra and Las Vegas. Is there any truth to this claim? Are these really the only desert cities that succeeded or are there others?
Here's the exact wording of Modesitt's claim:
There have only been, in human history, two cities in the desert that have actually succeeded. Now there are several turned into cities in the desert because of environmental degradation. But there are only two that actually started out as cities in the desert. One of them was Petra in the Jordan Sinai. Which existed only because the Nabataeans developed one of the most sophisticated forms of rainwater engineering. You can still supply literally thousands of people, even though the system is currently broke… Is partly broken, from its rainwater collection, and that’s in the middle of the desert. The second factor was it was on the intersection of caravan routes from the trade from the Middle East to Egypt. At that time, Egypt of course was one of the most prosperous areas...
The other one, by the way, is Las Vegas, which was only enabled by another great massive waterworks, otherwise known as the Boulder or Hoover dam. Neither city would exist without those modifications of the environment. But you aren’t going to have a city in the middle of the desert, because you have to have food. You can’t grow food in the desert. You can’t ship it over all of that sand without an incredible price to it, and you can’t afford it.
Thanks in advance!
2 Answers 2017-06-01
Looking for examples of Nazis in pulp fiction once thing that stands out that not only do these stories seem heavily sexualized (at least going by their cover) but almost always proclaimed with emboldened letters to be "for men only"; "men's epic"; "bluebook for men"; "men's"; "true men stories"; "real men"; "real action for men"; "man to man"; "sir"; "new man"; "all man"; "men today"; and "man's life".
The fact that in a contemporary context magazine of pornographic content and with these names would be assumed to be at odds with covers featuring scantily clad women aside, is there any significance to this marketing strategy/names other than the stories contained being pornographic? Does it hold some other significance? Is there pulp featuring the Nazis that is not decidedly not about things like "fantastic raid on the Nazi desert brothel"; "beauties for the Nazi's artists of agony"; "embrace me and die, american schweinhund"; or "the golden nudes for the Nazi mad sculptor"?
Finally, is there any sort of discernible connection (as an inspiration of sorts maybe) between the American pulp genre featuring Nazis and the Israeli Stalagim genre?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
In this episode of the podcast Writing Excuses, Howard Tayler says he heard from a documentary called Filthy Cities that only way to get beef to the nobles of 13th Century London was to march cows in the town and murder the cows. Is this true? If so, what's the historical background of this?
Here's the exact wording of what Tayler said:
I watched a documentary… A series of documentaries, I think it was called Filthy Cities. It was talking about, I think, 13th century London...They described how the royalty, king and queen and company… Beef! All about the beef. The nobility moved nearby. They also wanted beef. The way to get the beef was to march it across the bridge and murder it in town. The streets flowed with blood and cow entrails and filth. That’s not the London you think of when you are thinking of these banquets...That whole discussion, I realized that our predilection for beef only survives because we’ve got refrigeration and fast transportation.
Thank you in advance!
EDIT: in title, it should be march cows in the town and murder them...
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I recognize that the answer could vary wildly depending on the political/economic climate of any given region, but the thought occurred to me when I was playing through Elder Scrolls Oblivion and ran into a bandit compound based in an abandoned fort, almost directly outside the main gate to the Imperial City. It seems like nothing short of supreme negligence would allow that to happen, but I also wouldn't be surprised if, at certain tumultuous times in history, a city or kingdom found itself almost completely overrun with robbers and bandits.
2 Answers 2017-06-01
I understand that Germany is far from a racial utopia, but it seems they underwent a fairly stark transformation from the country that gave birth to the Nazi Party to a country that made Holocaust denial illegal. How did they achieve that kind of cultural shift rather than just falling deeper into resentment after losing WW2?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
I was thinking about it today how Black Sabbath was still touring up until this year, 47 years after their first album to very large crowds. When I say longevity, I mean still playing to large crowds relative to a genre's "heyday".
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Did most simply have little more than a canal or two, were there sewers or aqueducts, did anyone have plumbing? How was fresh water transported into the city if it was not adjacent to a river a or lake? If I lived at the top of hill in the city would I have to carry buckets up and down from the river just to drink/bathe?
1 Answers 2017-06-01
It occurred to me that these ancient cities would have needed a way to handle waste. Modern sewage systems are closed, and in the first world at least, do not pump raw sewage into waterways. The Romans were known for their innovation in road building, did this innovation extend to plumbing and sewage?
Also, did ancient sewage go into rivers/the ocean, and how did it get there? What were the conditions of the houses and streets? Were there open sewers or were there 'pipelines' of some sort? What level of awareness of hygiene was there during these times?
(Also: information regarding sewage in any major city during the same era would be equally interesting.)
2 Answers 2017-06-01
I have just watched what seems to be a recording of some news channel from Australia where a muslim denounces his own religion for "being built on 1400 years of violence". That got me wondering, how do islamic historical wars and acts of violence compare to some christian campaigns such as the Albigensian Crusade or the First Crusade itself and the capture of Jerusalem, or even the Inquisition?
Is Islam truly more violent than Christianity historically speaking? Can it be said that the Quran incites violence while the Bible does not?
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Okay, so from what I understand about homosexuality in the roman republic, it was considered OK to sleep with other dudes so long as you were the top. Wouldn't this result in there being a shortage of bottoms?
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I am finding books detailing their mindset and strategy throughout the Civil War. I am most interested in McClellan myself for his organization skill.
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During the 30 years war, the holy roman empire was basically at war with itself, and was being invaded by basically every other christian country at once. Why didn't the Ottomans take this golden opportunity to invade?
2 Answers 2017-06-01
This week, ending in June 01 2017:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
1 Answers 2017-06-01
After the fall of the French Empire, many of the reforms Napoleon introduced into the German Satellites were reversed. Can anyone elaborate on this?
For example, in "Napoleon The Great", Andrew Roberts talks about how the Napoleonic Code continued to influence many legal systems. On the other hand, the same Jewish Germans Napoleon had emancipated were forced back into ghettos.
In general, how would you characterize the state of Napoleon's legacy after 1814 east of the Rhine? Was Bismarck Napoleon's Germanic successor?
1 Answers 2017-06-01